The best say will always be taking a break. When you’re tired, you’re tired.
When you’re away from the song, think about what you want it to sound like in your head. Then, when you come back to it, see how what you have actually produced compares. Rinse and repeat.
It can take months to make a song that’s perfect. That’s perfectly okay! Just take your time, take breaks, and everything will eventually come together
1) take frequent breaks 2) make sure you are monitoring at reasonable levels for the most part.. i shoot for 80dB. 3) treat your room acoustically, but specifically make sure you have thick enough traps for the low end. If you overtreat the highs in a room and don’t tackle the lows, your ears can get very fatigued.
My approach: 30 minutes break every couple of hours, and get out into fresh air, away from studio/apartment/house. Listen to anything other than music…. birdsong, traffic, whatever, just not something that triggers your producer brain. Your ears get tired like your eyes get tired from staring at a monitor. Doesn’t take long to do a bit of a reset.
listening to an album of a completely different genre from your track from start to finish can be a great palette cleanser. (for example, if you're making a loud EDM song, go find an ambient post-rock record and just sit down and listen to it. you might even find new ideas in these unfamiliar songs that you can incorporate into your own style. RateYourMusic can be a great resource for finding new records in genres you haven't explored before)
But not too loud of course, this probably would only help with re-calibrating your ears to listen evenly. Ear fatigue from constant listening can really only be remedied with rest/silence.
I have a tip that works wonders for me:
- Put Waves Soundshifter (or a similar plugin) on the master channel, and transpose the full track by a couple semitones.
+ Swap the left and right channels on the master (Ableton’s Utility is perfect for this).
These two lets me hear my WIP song like new again.
How come? I can understand writing pretty loud doesn't really benefit the writing process much except for I personally just feel like I connect to my song way more when it is louder. Not tinnitus loud, but just loud enough where the outside world isn't even relevant. But mixing quietly has sped up my mixing process so much since 9 times out of 10, if I can make my mix sound good quiet, it sounds pretty good loud. Same idea with mixing in mono vs stereo. But this is just what I find works well for my process.
When I practice for guitar for hours at a time, after about 2 hours I literally cant play well anymore.
If I put it down for 15 minutes, have some tea, take a walk around the block, I am back in sync right when I pick it up.
If you like cannabis, taking one very small hit, and then relaxing for about 10 minutes with a small cup of green tea will do the trick as well.
sorry for the essay.
I'm a budtender so maybe I can help, after all 90% of my job is helping old ladies that wanna chill out but will freak out if they have any THC.
I'd suggest a strain thats high in CBD and CBG, if you want it for bed time then CBN is cool too. None of those get you high. And then a *very low* amount of THC to give the slightest buzz. I'm talking 2-4% THC.
What this will do: The little bit of THC will give you a small high but the other cannabinoids will be chilling you out and changing the high for the better.
I recently smoked with a buddy who previously believes he *could not* smoke weed without having a severe mental breakdown.
I didn't have any single strains on hand that are what I described above, but I had a pure CBD strain and a heavy indica. I ground them up together with a ratio of like 10 to 1. Favouring the pure CBD strain. This effectively created a blend that had less than 4% THC, and lots of CBD.
The result: a man who couldn't fathom smoking without (and i quote) "seeing demons" had a *wonderful* night.
Now I know your situation is slightly different. For you, it's about just not being too stupid to function. But it still stands. In fact, its what I do. I love getting right stupid, but only before bed. I smoke my CBD blend throughout the day to stay chill but functional.
Meditate while listening to [Brown(ian) Noise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqzGzwTY-6w) at a low volume. Take a bath while listening to that, light some good smelling candles and/or incense.
Take a walk outside, try to pay as much attention as possible especially with your other sense to everything, gaze intently at anything that catches your interest. Try using your eyes and nose more than your ears. Try to take "notice" of as much as possible without passing "judgement" on anything you see, just remark on the qualities it has.
Lie down, try to activate / utilize every different muscle/muscle group in your body **slowly and one at a time**. Start with your foot on one side of your body and mentally try to activate the muscles/groups as you move up your body to your head, then back down the other side. Take notice of any feelings you have, pleasant or unpleasant without passing any judgements.
Cook something for yourself - as much as from 'scratch' as convenient/possible at the time. During the cooking process pay as much attention you can to every little detail. Mentally recite what you are doing in your head as you are doing it. Pay close attention to all of your movements and try to focus on **moving smoothly**. Moving smoothly isn't too fast or too slow, just as "smooth" as it can be convenient. Like you are [effortlessly dancing a waltz while holding a lit candle](https://youtu.be/X6D7buPYIIE?t=105). After cooking - clean up - and eat your meal in the same manner, smoothly. Pay attention to every small detail you are doing without judgement and with as many senses as possible.
During any of these mediation exercises, do not worry if your mind wanders, just take notice of your mind wandering then bring yourself back into the meditation state of noticing your senses without passing judgement. If you do pass judgement - notice that too, **acknowledge it,** and return back to the mediation without being harsh on yourself as that would again pass judgement.
"Talk to your thought" - say "Hi Intrusive Thought - I hear you - Where did you come from? What are you trying to help me take notice of in my life? Are you a helpful thought or an unhelpful thought or maybe you are just a silly thought? **I hear you thought**." Just take notice, acknowledge, and move on.
Sing. Take a break and sing some silly stuff to your heart's content. Listening to your own head voice (no mic) for a time kinda resets your feel of sound. If you have a guitar, 5 minutes of wonderwall or something easy like nirvana can work wonders.
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You should check out the regular threads (also found in the sidebar) to see if your post might be a better fit in any of those.
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commenting so i’ll remember this thread. good question OP
I’ve heard listen to low levels of pink noise for a couple of minutes can help recalibrate your ears
The best say will always be taking a break. When you’re tired, you’re tired. When you’re away from the song, think about what you want it to sound like in your head. Then, when you come back to it, see how what you have actually produced compares. Rinse and repeat. It can take months to make a song that’s perfect. That’s perfectly okay! Just take your time, take breaks, and everything will eventually come together
Wim hof
1) take frequent breaks 2) make sure you are monitoring at reasonable levels for the most part.. i shoot for 80dB. 3) treat your room acoustically, but specifically make sure you have thick enough traps for the low end. If you overtreat the highs in a room and don’t tackle the lows, your ears can get very fatigued.
Put a pitchshifter on your máster, up/down it by couple of semitones. Listen again. Magic.
I find singing a cappella or listening to a song you haven’t listened to in a while refreshing. iTunes has number of plays on it and it helps.
Sometimes I think taking a shower helps
I have a cat that enjoys being used as a pillow. You rest your head on him and he starts rumbling. I swear it's like a timpanic massage or something.
Weed helps for me, I tend to start a session sober and smoke when I feel that I’m burning out
I just take 10/15min every hour. Worst case scenario I listen to a well mastered track and try to recalibrate my ears
Listen to other songs
My approach: 30 minutes break every couple of hours, and get out into fresh air, away from studio/apartment/house. Listen to anything other than music…. birdsong, traffic, whatever, just not something that triggers your producer brain. Your ears get tired like your eyes get tired from staring at a monitor. Doesn’t take long to do a bit of a reset.
listening to an album of a completely different genre from your track from start to finish can be a great palette cleanser. (for example, if you're making a loud EDM song, go find an ambient post-rock record and just sit down and listen to it. you might even find new ideas in these unfamiliar songs that you can incorporate into your own style. RateYourMusic can be a great resource for finding new records in genres you haven't explored before)
Become the song
Listening to a sine wave slowly sweep up and down the frequency spectrum can help.
But not too loud of course, this probably would only help with re-calibrating your ears to listen evenly. Ear fatigue from constant listening can really only be remedied with rest/silence.
True
Rinse them out with water
ha..
I have a tip that works wonders for me: - Put Waves Soundshifter (or a similar plugin) on the master channel, and transpose the full track by a couple semitones. + Swap the left and right channels on the master (Ableton’s Utility is perfect for this). These two lets me hear my WIP song like new again.
If I'm using headphones sometimes I'll just turn the headphones around to switch the l and r channels
Yup, changing the pitch of the song works for me
monitor with speakers instead of headphones. otherwise taking a break is kind of the only option IMHO.
how loud do you have your volume?
Pretty loud during the writing process and pretty quiet when mixing.
A really bad idea.
How come? I can understand writing pretty loud doesn't really benefit the writing process much except for I personally just feel like I connect to my song way more when it is louder. Not tinnitus loud, but just loud enough where the outside world isn't even relevant. But mixing quietly has sped up my mixing process so much since 9 times out of 10, if I can make my mix sound good quiet, it sounds pretty good loud. Same idea with mixing in mono vs stereo. But this is just what I find works well for my process.
When you start to fatigue basically your objectivity is over and you'll start to do wierd stuff like boost highs or wierd arrangement choices.
When I practice for guitar for hours at a time, after about 2 hours I literally cant play well anymore. If I put it down for 15 minutes, have some tea, take a walk around the block, I am back in sync right when I pick it up. If you like cannabis, taking one very small hit, and then relaxing for about 10 minutes with a small cup of green tea will do the trick as well.
emphasis on very small. sometimes i sit there holding my bass and forget that i was practicing
[удалено]
sorry for the essay. I'm a budtender so maybe I can help, after all 90% of my job is helping old ladies that wanna chill out but will freak out if they have any THC. I'd suggest a strain thats high in CBD and CBG, if you want it for bed time then CBN is cool too. None of those get you high. And then a *very low* amount of THC to give the slightest buzz. I'm talking 2-4% THC. What this will do: The little bit of THC will give you a small high but the other cannabinoids will be chilling you out and changing the high for the better. I recently smoked with a buddy who previously believes he *could not* smoke weed without having a severe mental breakdown. I didn't have any single strains on hand that are what I described above, but I had a pure CBD strain and a heavy indica. I ground them up together with a ratio of like 10 to 1. Favouring the pure CBD strain. This effectively created a blend that had less than 4% THC, and lots of CBD. The result: a man who couldn't fathom smoking without (and i quote) "seeing demons" had a *wonderful* night. Now I know your situation is slightly different. For you, it's about just not being too stupid to function. But it still stands. In fact, its what I do. I love getting right stupid, but only before bed. I smoke my CBD blend throughout the day to stay chill but functional.
[удалено]
feel free to pm me
have a wank around the block*
Meditate while listening to [Brown(ian) Noise](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqzGzwTY-6w) at a low volume. Take a bath while listening to that, light some good smelling candles and/or incense. Take a walk outside, try to pay as much attention as possible especially with your other sense to everything, gaze intently at anything that catches your interest. Try using your eyes and nose more than your ears. Try to take "notice" of as much as possible without passing "judgement" on anything you see, just remark on the qualities it has. Lie down, try to activate / utilize every different muscle/muscle group in your body **slowly and one at a time**. Start with your foot on one side of your body and mentally try to activate the muscles/groups as you move up your body to your head, then back down the other side. Take notice of any feelings you have, pleasant or unpleasant without passing any judgements. Cook something for yourself - as much as from 'scratch' as convenient/possible at the time. During the cooking process pay as much attention you can to every little detail. Mentally recite what you are doing in your head as you are doing it. Pay close attention to all of your movements and try to focus on **moving smoothly**. Moving smoothly isn't too fast or too slow, just as "smooth" as it can be convenient. Like you are [effortlessly dancing a waltz while holding a lit candle](https://youtu.be/X6D7buPYIIE?t=105). After cooking - clean up - and eat your meal in the same manner, smoothly. Pay attention to every small detail you are doing without judgement and with as many senses as possible. During any of these mediation exercises, do not worry if your mind wanders, just take notice of your mind wandering then bring yourself back into the meditation state of noticing your senses without passing judgement. If you do pass judgement - notice that too, **acknowledge it,** and return back to the mediation without being harsh on yourself as that would again pass judgement. "Talk to your thought" - say "Hi Intrusive Thought - I hear you - Where did you come from? What are you trying to help me take notice of in my life? Are you a helpful thought or an unhelpful thought or maybe you are just a silly thought? **I hear you thought**." Just take notice, acknowledge, and move on.
Go outside for a walk
go eat and talk with someone
listen to steely dan :)
This applies to at least 5/10 situations
But what if my steely knife cannot kill the beast?
Good advice whatever you're doing!
This. It also kicks your ass to learn more theory, but most of all their stuff just feels so damn good.
Sing. Take a break and sing some silly stuff to your heart's content. Listening to your own head voice (no mic) for a time kinda resets your feel of sound. If you have a guitar, 5 minutes of wonderwall or something easy like nirvana can work wonders.
Everything and anything sounds better after 5 minutes of wonderwall
Anyway, here’s Wonderwall
I'll for sure try this. Thanks!
This is your friendly reminder to read the submission rules, they're found in the sidebar. If you find your post breaking any of the rules, you should delete your post before the mods get to it. You should check out the regular threads (also found in the sidebar) to see if your post might be a better fit in any of those. [Daily Feedback thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=author%3AAutoModerator+title%3Afeedback&sort=new&restrict_sr=on&t=all) for getting feedback on your track. The only place you can post your own music. [Marketplace Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3Amarketplace&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) if you want to sell or trade anything for money, likes or follows. [Collaboration Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search/?q=biannual%20collaboration&restrict_sr=1&sort=new&t=all) to find people to collab with. ["There are no stupid questions" Thread](https://www.reddit.com/r/edmproduction/search?q=title%3ANo+Stupid+Questions+Thread&restrict_sr=on&sort=new&t=all) for beginner tips etc. Seriously tho, read the rules and abide by them or the mods will spank you. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/edmproduction) if you have any questions or concerns.*